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2019: WE NEED A TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION Commission in the US now for the Adoption Programs that stole generations of children... Goldwater Institute's work to dismantle ICWA is another glaring attempt at cultural genocide.

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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Dumping adoptees? It's called The Child Exchange

Americans use the Internet to abandon children adopted from overseas

MOTIVATED MOM: In
her time seeking children on the Internet, Nicole Eason has referred to
herself as Big Momma and Momma Bear. Her term for informal custody
transfers is "non-legalized adoption," and she defines the phrase to
mean: "Hey, can I have your baby?" REUTERS/Samantha Sais

Part 1: When a Liberian girl proves too
much for her parents, they advertise her online and give her to a
couple they’ve never met. Days later, she goes missing.

KIEL, Wisconsin – Todd and Melissa Puchalla
struggled for more than two years to raise Quita, the troubled teenager
they'd adopted from Liberia. When they decided to give her up, they
found new parents to take her in less than two days – by posting an ad
on the Internet.

Nicole and Calvin Eason, an Illinois couple in
their 30s, saw the ad and a picture of the smiling 16-year-old. They
were eager to take Quita, even though the ad warned that she had been
diagnosed with severe health and behavioral problems. In emails, Nicole
Eason assured Melissa Puchalla that she could handle the girl.

"People that are around me think I am awesome with kids," Eason wrote.

A few weeks later, on Oct. 4, 2008, the
Puchallas drove six hours from their Wisconsin home to Westville,
Illinois. The handoff took place at the Country Aire Mobile Home Park,
where the Easons lived in a trailer.

No attorneys or child welfare officials came with
them. The Puchallas simply signed a notarized statement declaring these
virtual strangers to be Quita's guardians. The visit lasted just a few
hours. It was the first and the last time the couples would meet.

To Melissa Puchalla, the Easons "seemed wonderful."
Had she vetted them more closely, she might have discovered what
Reuters would learn:

• Child welfare authorities had taken away both of
Nicole Eason's biological children years earlier. After a sheriff's
deputy helped remove the Easons' second child, a newborn baby boy, the
deputy wrote in his report that the "parents have severe psychiatric problems as well with violent tendencies."

• The Easons each had been accused by children they
were babysitting of sexual abuse, police reports show. They say they
did nothing wrong, and neither was charged.

On Quita's first night with the Easons, her new
guardians told her to join them in their bed, Quita says today. Nicole
slept naked, she says.

Within a few days, the Easons stopped responding to
Melissa Puchalla's attempts to check on Quita, Puchalla says. When she
called the school that Quita was supposed to attend, an administrator
told Puchalla that the teenager had never shown up.

Quita wasn't at the trailer park, either. The
Easons had packed up their purple Chevy truck and driven off with her,
leaving behind a pile of trash, a pair of blue mattresses and two
puppies chained in their yard, authorities later found.

The Puchallas had rescued Quita from an orphanage
in Liberia, brought her to America and then signed her over to a couple
they barely knew. Days later, they had no idea what had become of her.

When she arrived in the United States, Quita says,
she "was happy … coming to a nicer place, a safer place. It didn't turn
out that way," she says today. "It turned into a nightmare."

The teenager had been tossed into America's
underground market for adopted children, a loose Internet network where
desperate parents seek new homes for kids they regret adopting. Like
Quita, now 21, these children are often the casualties of international
adoptions gone sour.

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Indian Country is under attack. Native tribes and people are fighting hard for justice. There is need for legal assistance across Indian Country, and NARF is doing as much as we can. With your help, we have fought for 48 years and we continue to fight.

It is hard to understand the extent of the attacks on Indian Country. We are sending a short series of emails this month with a few examples of attacks that are happening across Indian Country and how we are standing firm for justice.

Today, we look at recent effort to undo laws put in place to protect Native American children and families. All children deserve to be raised by loving families and communities. In the 1970s, Congress realized that state agencies and courts were disproportionately removing American Indian and Alaska Native children from their families. Often these devastating removals were due to an inability or unwillingness to understand Native cultures, where family is defined broadly and raising children is a shared responsibility. To stop these destructive practices, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

After forty years, ICWA has proven to be largely successful and many states have passed their own ICWAs. This success, however, is now being challenged by large, well-financed opponents who are actively and aggressively seeking to undermine ICWA’s protections for Native children. We are seeing lawsuits across the United States that challenge ICWA’s protections. NARF is working with partners to defend the rights of Native children and families.

where were you adopted?

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

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The Network is open to all Indigenous and Foster Care Survivors any time.

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

This has happened to many, many Native children! We must protect ICWA and enforce it so that it stops! Even non-Native families that are not racist cannot provide a Native child with cultural knowledge and belonging. Only their tribes can do that. #ProudtoProtectICWAhttps://t.co/oA1e5kiK4k

A4: Twenty-one states filed an amicus brief in this case in support of #ICWA. These states, which are home to over 70 percent of tribal nations, know that ICWA helps them better serve Native children and families.#ProudtoProtectICWA

TWO WORLDS Book 1 (second edition)

Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Did you know?

Good words

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

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